A thought on monoculture
I remember the debacle around GameStop a few months ago because I saw it through a certain prism. For one I’ve been on Wall Street Bets years before it had garnered any outside attention. And two, me being me, I’m subscribed to any number of lefty media people like Glenn Greenwald, The Hill, Matt Taibbi etc.
Given what I know the story was on its face completely ridiculous, the idea that WSB was now a political movement rather than what it really is, a place for shameless gambling addicts to expose themselves for the thrill they can only receive from a public lashing while yelling AUTIST. Yet the lie was repeated not by the mainstream news I hated so viscerally but by exactly the alternative media I thought was the exact antidote.
In fact with media as in politics the problem never was with individuals but the invisible structures that create the narrow lines of debate. Now, over a decade after the financial crisis of 2008 and a new crisis we’re currently in the midst of we have a meta narrative that pervades everything, its the evil warlord (international finance) against their hapless victims (main street real workers). Everything must conform to this narrative. Nuance is lost as the evil warlords are neatly repackaged into stories of men sexually assaulting women or whites humiliating or harming blacks. In some cases, nuance isn’t relevant, there are clear cut examples of bad v good but that’s like the minority, the majority is of unclear villain’s and victims and ambiguous self serving saviors if there are any.
It isn’t do to say these things in the current media eco system. But why? Because the tremendous torrent of information we are constantly bombarded with over our phones and laptops creates a state of permanent dementia. Much like Goldfish we forget what it is we were so animated about yesterday when we saw this or that Tweet and its this way every day. And this law of radical inversion holds true in the other arena, distinct opinion. Because the internet allows every single thought to be immediately materialized into content that can be viewed by anyone the sum effect is exactly that of conformity overtaking everything you see.
Where before we stood over a vast landscape and could see, if we squinted, a new creature we hadn’t seen before, now we’re in a curated zoo nested in a hall of mirror. Everything reflection supposedly a new creation.
